How to install Laravel

"Learn how to install Laravel with an example step-by-step guide - from downloading and configuring the environment to creating a project!"

Laravel is an open-source PHP framework used for developing web applications. It is based on the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern and provides an easy way to create robust applications. In this tutorial we will learn how to install Laravel on a Linux server.

Prerequisites

Before you can install Laravel, you need to have the following installed on your server:

• Apache or Nginx web server
• PHP version 7.3 or higher
• MySQL version 5.7 or higher

You should also have the following installed:

• Composer version 1.8 or higher
• OpenSSL PHP Extension
• PDO PHP Extension
• Mbstring PHP Extension
• Tokenizer PHP Extension
• XML PHP Extension
• Ctype PHP Extension
• JSON PHP Extension

Install Laravel

Now that you have all the prerequisites installed, you can proceed to install Laravel. The first step is to create a new Laravel project. You can do this by running the following command:

composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel blog

This command will install the latest version of Laravel in the blog directory. Once the installation is complete, you can navigate to the blog directory and run the following command to start the development server:

php artisan serve

This will start the development server on port 8000. You can access the application by visiting http://localhost:8000 in your web browser. Congratulations, you have just installed Laravel!

Configure Database

Now that you have Laravel installed, you need to configure the database. You can do this by editing the .env file in the root directory of the project. This file contains the configuration settings for the database. You need to update the following settings:

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=laravel
DB_USERNAME=root
DB_PASSWORD=

Make sure to update the DB_HOST, DB_PORT, DB_DATABASE, DB_USERNAME and DB_PASSWORD settings according to your database setup. Once the database is configured, you can run the following command to create the database tables:

php artisan migrate

This command will create all the necessary tables in the database. Congratulations, you have now successfully installed and configured Laravel!